More than 200 students completed the Elevate Summer School program on Friday, wrapping up four weeks of learning and fun.
The students, who just finished kindergarten through 8th grade in June, took a quick break for Independence Day before they returned to school for a review of reading, writing, mathematics and other subjects during a half-day summer school program at Howard L. Goff Middle School. They made friends, played outside for recess and even performed in a Talent Show.
Classes were taught by East Greenbush Central School District teachers who focused on specific academic areas. And the small class sizes provided more targeted instruction.
The Elevate Summer School program began in 2021 as a way to combat learning loss related to COVID-19. The program is open to any students, and runs concurrently with the Extended School Year Program for Special Education students.
Our K-8 Elevate Summer School program ended in style today with an outstanding Talent Show!
Students danced, told jokes, shared interesting facts, put on a fashion show, and performed King Midas and the Golden Touch! pic.twitter.com/OMKJfzofHl
— East Greenbush CSD (@EGreenbushCSD) July 28, 2023
Students and teachers celebrated with a Talent Show in the school cafeteria on Friday. Each grade level performed a different act, which included dances, jokes, a fashion show, and a play.
“I cannot express how much I enjoyed working with your children and the outstanding teachers we have for the summer,” Elevate Principal Mike Neumann wrote to families in a letter on Friday. “I saw rigorous work, collaboration with other classes and students, and fun activities like the talent show we had this morning. I am confident that your students are well prepared for the fall and beyond.”
Areas of Focus:
Kindergarten
- Letter and sound review
- Sight words, decoding and comprehension skills
- Sentence writing and editing
- Addition and subtraction concepts within 20
- Counting to 20, 50 and 100 by ones
- Simple word problems
1st Grade
- Phonics development
- Reading comprehension
- Read from various texts including controlled text of decodable readers, leveled guided reading passages, Scholastic News articles
- Read one-on-one with teacher, in partnerships with students and in whole group settings
- Daily read-alouds during snack time
- Writing for various purposes – opinion, narrative and expository
- Addition and subtraction
- Weekly lessons with school counselor to learn strategies to express feelings, make decisions and develop coping skills
2nd Grade
- Built comprehension skills by identifying the problem and solution in stories
- Writing both creatively and responding to texts
- Addition and subtraction of three-digit numbers
- Word problems
- Measuring
- Telling time
- Geometry
3rd Grade
- Practiced comprehension skills by reading a variety of texts to find the main idea, determining the theme, vocabulary development and sequencing events chronologically
- Used engaging writing prompts to enhance writing skills
- Reviewed area, elapsed time, fractions and other basic math facts
- Problem solving skills
- Weekly lessons with school social worker to learn decision making skills, taking time to think, self control and processing feelings
4th Grade
- Reviewed story elements including plot, character development, problem and solution and different themes found within stories
- Completed a research project on an animal of their choice
- Created a slideshow to present the facts they learned about their animal
- Reviewed math concepts including place value, fractions and all four math operations
- Multi-digit multiplication and division
- Equivalent fractions
5th Grade
- Read the novel “Hoot” by Carl Hiaasen and participated in a book study
- Reviewed literacy skills such as main idea, cause and effect, summarizing, compare and contrast, drawing conclusions, literary devices and story mapping
- Engaged in meaningful conversations to help reinforce the importance of text-based evidence
- Independent reading of summer book project for 6th grade
- Reviewed math concepts such as whole numbers, decimals and fractions
- Open ended, multiple solution problems to further develop critical thinking and problem solving skills
6th-8th Grade
- Reviewed critical concepts in reading/literacy
- Determining main idea
- Describing
- Summarizing
- Drawing conclusions
- Elements of fiction
- Fluency
- Developed writing skills through daily journal writing
- Practiced argument writing and poetry
- Reviewed math topics from the previous school year
- 6th Grade – Greatest common factors, least common multiples, fractions, decimals, percents, proportions, equations
- 7th Grade – Writing and solving proportional relationships, fraction operations, solving equations, perimeter, area, surface area and volume
- 8th Grade – Rational and irrational numbers, solving equations, rotate, reflect and translate points on a coordinate plane, triangles and the Pythagorean Theorem.
- Pre-taught Social Studies topics that will be covered in the upcoming school year
- Pre-taught Science topics that will be covered in the upcoming school year by utilizing experiments and hands-on learning
- 6th Grade – Photosynthesis and cellular respiration
- 7th Grade – Density
- 8th Grade – Mineral formation